


the wanting comes in waves

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Campaign (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Other, Queerplatonic Relationships, Queerplatonic Trable, and also an annoying changeling who refuses to let you die alone, sometimes you kill god and get a whole bunch of identity issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: You can't bring yourself to regret it. But you still carry the guilt.
Relationships: Gable & Travis Matagot, Gable/Travis Matagot, it's complicated but they love each other
Comments: 19
Kudos: 24





	the wanting comes in waves

**Author's Note:**

> _Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means  
>  we’re inconsolable.  
> Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
> These, our bodies, possessed by light.  
> Tell me we’ll never get used to it._
> 
> scheherazade, richard siken 
> 
> (title from the hazards of love)

_Uriel, you dream._

_Weapons are not supposed to dream, but you do. Over and over. You dream of… well. You dream of skies and falls and love, even though you don’t understand these things and know you never will._

_You are not supposed to dream. This is something that is broken in you, not a gift, not a blessing. Do you understand me? Do you understand cruelty?_

_Do you forgive me?_

— 

Gable doesn't remember… well. Heaven. Wherever they’d been before. _Whatever_ they’d been before. But they know it’s missing, that they miss it. The absence hurts, dragging at them and threatening to drown them all over again. Before they’d known anything else, they’d known the drowning. 

They stay away from the water, and they stay away from angels. Only on desperate nights do they stop and listen to the stories being told in the corners of dingy taverns or busy streets, stories of wings and swords and fire. They always leave feeling dirty, like they’ve broken somebody’s trust. 

All Gable can remember how much it had hurt. Not the fall— before that. It’s shadowy, indistinct, like a memory you only know through stories and pictures. There’d been anger, they know, and it had been addictive, freeing— the first thing that they’d ever felt telling them that the way they were being treated wasn’t _fair._ But it’s the pain that sticks, twisting deep in their chest, driving them to— 

They don’t know. They don’t remember. But they know they _should._

They carry their guilt in the absence in their chest, nestled in close next to the anger and the loneliness. Guilt for what they were, guilt for what they are and cannot be. 

Gable doesn’t dream much anymore, but when they do, they dream of broken things. 

— 

“What are you?” asks Travis Matagot, when he finds them in this cold, barren place that’s become their death sentence. 

“I am—” they begin, “I am—” 

It’s been months since they last spoke to anyone who isn’t the dead eyed priests of the Slain God. It takes them too long to form the words, they can’t focus their gaze properly to look up at him, a white snake curled around iron bars. The walls they’re slumped against are cold, but everything’s cold, and maybe this is what they deserve. 

“I can see you haven’t gotten any smarter since we last met,” Travis says, and Gable can’t find it in themself to react. They just stare listlessly at the ground. 

Travis moves closer, winding between the window bars. “I said—” 

“I heard you,” they say, their voice hoarse. “Why are you here, Travis?” 

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” he says flippantly. “We’re the reason God is dead, creatures like you and I.” 

Gable tips their head back and closes their eyes against the old, familiar fear. 

Somewhere deep inside the prison, someone screams. It echoes around the cell, and Gable focuses on just breathing, inhale, exhale. 

“How long have you been here?” Travis asks, once the scream has faded back into icy silence. There’s a note in his voice Gable can’t quite identify. 

They shrug vaguely. “Lost count after the first, what, five years.” 

“It’s taken them that long to get to the whole, you know, _execution_ thing?” 

“Oh,” Gable says darkly. “Oh, no.” They look up at Travis properly for the first time. “I’m just too _fascinating_ for that. They’re _studying_ me. I won’t be executed until they’ve decided the only thing left to do is take me apart.” 

Travis stares at them, an impenetrable gaze that Gable doesn’t know how to unravel. 

“What?” they ask, eventually, when he doesn’t speak. 

“What _are_ you?” he says, and Gable rolls their eyes with more energy than they’ve done anything with for _years._

— 

The first time they fly a bird, something wakes up in Gable that they hadn’t even known they were missing. They soar up into the sky until all they can do is laugh until there are tears streaming down their cheeks. When they land, their legs are so shaky they can barely stand, and the man who owns the birds laughs at them kindly. 

“Was that your first time?” he asks, and Gable nods, still breathless. He reaches out to pat the flank of the bird. “It gets some people like that. The first time I flew Roman, here, I felt like I could abandon walking the land altogether and never once miss it.” 

Gable tries to brush the tears off their cheeks subtly. “I don’t think that sounds so bad.” 

He smiles. “People like you and me, I think we’re meant to be in the sky.”

“Hah,” Gable says. “Oh, not anymore.” 

He looks at them, and Gable can’t help noticing how warm and soft his eyes are. They seem to read entirely too much. “Why not?” he asks. 

They shake their head. “Well, uh. There was someone, who— who didn’t…” 

They trail off, not sure what to say, but he doesn’t seem thrown. In fact, he looks at them with something like… like understanding. He puts a gentle hand on their forearm. 

“I’ve been there,” he says, “But no one deserves the power to take that feeling away from you.” 

“Oh,” Gable says, _“Oh,_ it wasn’t, uh, a _lover_ or anything like—” 

“No, no, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he says. “Just. Keep it in mind. The sky’s still there for you, when you’re ready.” 

Gable doesn’t know what to say. But when they leave, they can’t help looking back. 

— 

They know Travis is watching them, as they stand over the pile of bodies and wipe blood from their eyes. The alley is dark, and silent, now, but they can feel his gaze on them, as sharp as a knife. Normally, there aren't any survivors after this. No witnesses. Just Gable and their too fast heartbeat and the blood dripping from their hands. But someone was going to catch them eventually, and it stands to reason that it’s Travis Matagot. 

They look up at last, making eye contact. His face is unreadable, the air smells of the blood. They feel, for an incomprehensible moment, like they're being judged. Judged and found... 

Found lacking? Monstrous? A thing that hurts other things, a— a weapon? 

"Do you want a drink?" Travis says, breaking the silence irreverently. “I want a _drink.”_

He steps delicately over the mess and motions towards the tavern across the street. When Gable doesn’t move, he says “You coming or what?” 

“What is wrong with you,” Gable mutters. 

“Okay, what’s _your_ problem?” Travis says, turning back to face them. 

“What’s my _problem?”_ Gable splutters. “I— I’m—” 

“What? A monster?” he snaps at them, and despite themselves it hurts to hear it from him. “Yeah, well. Join the fucking club, Gable. You’re so— Ugh. Never mind.” He pulls his coat close around his shoulders, and stomps away into the light of the main street. 

Gable almost calls after him, but they don’t know what they would say.

— 

They don’t ride birds again for a very long time. Then, they’re striding through a bustling underground amphitheatre trying to find a contact who apparently has a bounty that she wants delivery on and they hear a sound they’ve never heard before but somehow, they recognise it immediately. A bird, screaming in fear and pain. All at once, what it is that actually happens here falls into place, and all at once, Gable is _furious._

They leave with a beautiful brown-white bird by their side and an amphitheatre in chaos behind them. Once they’ve run far enough and sat still long enough to calm their breathing, they look at the bird and say “I think I’ll call you Metatron.” 

The bird caws, and looks expectantly at Gable. They laugh, just a little. “Okay,” they say, “Okay, boy. We’ll find something to eat.”

— 

“What is wrong with you?” Travis says, once he’s secure enough in the belief that Gable’s not going to leave him that he feels safe enough to get angry with them. They know that’s how he thinks. Over the years, they’ve learnt how to read him, bit by bit. 

“You know what’s wrong with me,” Gable says wearily. This argument has been a bit of a recurring theme since leaving Nordia. Something changed, and now neither of them know how to deal with it properly. 

“I can’t believe you,” he says, and they’ve been here before, so many times before. Gable casts a look up and down the deck. It’s dark, the graveyard shift of the Uhuru, Travis is human beside them and there are no stars in the sky. This wasn’t supposed to be his watch, but he’d wandered up almost as soon as the sun set. Couldn’t sleep, or so he said. So they were just standing together, leaning against the railings of the ship. 

He’s still angry, but Gable’s used to anger. What’s catching at them is the _pain._

He’s talking again, but they cut across him. “William,” they say, because they know it’ll get his attention and they just want him to stop looking at them like a wounded creature. 

He looks up at them, eyes dark. “What?”

“You know how this ends, right? For me?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“There’s no— there’s no _good_ ending on the cards here. Not for someone who’s— done what I’ve done. No, listen to me,” they say, as he tries to interrupt. “I knew how this would end the moment I started this. It ends— they’re searching for me, you know. It ends the moment they find me, and it ends in blood and fire and you, you’re not like me.” 

“That’s for sure,” Travis says, and Gable just sighs. 

“Please,” they say, and it comes out more broken than they intend it to. “You don’t deserve— I won’t damn you to my fate like that.” 

He holds his hand up, showing them the place that Margaret’s spell had illuminated the string connecting them. “It’s been too late for that for a long time,” he says. 

“You understand that isn’t a comfort.” 

“Good, it wasn’t meant to be,” he says. 

“Why won’t you just leave me?” Gable asks, and they’re so, so tired of being alone, but the only thing worse than having to do this by themselves is dragging someone else down with them. Not just someone else. _Travis._ They think of the bell on the Il Sangue Dio. “I thought snakes were supposed to know when to abandon sinking ships.” 

“One,” he says, “That’s rats. And two, I’m only a snake a quarter of the time.” 

“A fifth,” Gable points out. 

“What?”

“You’re a snake a fifth of the time.” 

“Oh, so now _you_ know how much time _I_ spend as a snake, do you?” 

“Yes?” 

“This isn’t the point,” Travis says.

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you know I’m right,” Gable says, and he ignores them. 

“The point is,” he says, “The point is, you think I don’t know what I’m getting into?” 

“No,” they say flatly. “You don’t.” 

“Gable, I’ve been here before,” he says. “I practically wrote the book on tragically doomed love, you know. Once upon a time.” 

“Is that… how you feel about this? Us?” they ask, ever so softly. 

He shrugs. “Close enough. Who cares. What I’m saying is— I don’t care what you’ve done or what you deserve. I’ll be there, and sure, it’s probably gonna suck, but we’ll deal with it together. That’s what this _means,”_ he says, and suddenly Gable can see something in his face that they’ve never understood before. Trust and care, all mixed up with the time and the hurt, and they’re hit with a wave of something deep and simple and honest. 

“Right?” he says. 

“Oh, you stupid fucking idiot,” Gable says, but it turns teary halfway through. “You stupid—” they scoop Travis up into a hug, and for once he doesn’t complain. He just puts his arms around their shoulders and holds on as tight as he can. 

— 

_No, you think. I don’t forgive you._

_And I watch you, Uriel, as you raise your sword._

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr as [drowninginstarlights!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/drowninginstarlights)


End file.
